


Why Do You Swallow So Much Sleep

by orphan_account



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Guilt, Multi, angsty reflection on deans part, drunken!dean, endverse!AU, fallen!cas, get it together guys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 02:58:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1412437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Short Endverse blurb. Cas is becoming more lost and dependent on drugs and losing himself, and Dean can't help to feel responsible, because he his. Cas knows this, but knows Dean didn't mean for this to be the outcome.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why Do You Swallow So Much Sleep

**Author's Note:**

> _There's a story in which my eyes shut_  
>  Is it late enough, is it late enough?  
> Can you bag me up, can you bag me up?
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> _(scrawled this out months ago in, like, the space of an hour, so theres that)__  
> 

Dean had lost two more guys in the fights today.

It’d been like any other weekly supply run, right up until the goddamned Croatoan zombies had piled out of an old hardware store by the dozens, Walking Dead style. They’d taken the squadron completely by surprise, and though a rifle was enough to take out the corpses, it lacked the ability to prevent two young men to get pulled down with them.

As Dean circled the camp for one last minute before calling it a day, he swished the remainder of what used to be half a bottle of straight whiskey (now only a sad few ounces) and let the fumes of the alcohol chase the sounds of his squad members’ screans from his head. The whiskey was doing a piss- poor job. The yells were just as loud as before, but distorted. It sounded like their ghosts were moaning in Dean’s memory.

Scowling, he dropped the bottle into the grass with a muted ‘ clink ‘ and lumbered to the beaten- down, sagging shack of a cabin that he had been assigned to. He tried the door- locked.

“Damnit.” With an irritated growl, he set his shoulder against the rotting wood, somehow believing it would help as he jiggled the handle. “Damnit, Cas, let me in!” he yelled at the door, the whorls in the wood swimming before his eyes.

An answer came in the form of a shuffle and click from inside. Dean stopped assaulting the door long enough to register the clumsy footsteps that, even drunk, he would recognize anywhere.

Cas opened the door, staring up at him without emotion.

“Ah. Our fearless leader, back again.” Cas’s voice lilted around what was becoming one of his favorite names for Dean, something Dean had realized was a half- hearted insult more than a joke a little while ago. He hadn’t done anything about it, though. His raspy sarcasm fell on Dean like acid.

He knit his brow as he looked Cas over, heart sinking even farther in his chest. He’d only been gone for two days, and Cas looked twice as hallow and three times as disheveled as he’d left him. His hair, which he’d long ago ceased taking any generous amount of time to care for, was a floppy, stringy, mess. He was unshaven and his dull blue eyes swam amongst the deep- set circles that resembled thunderclouds. He wasn’t wearing his jacket tonight. A loose- collared shirt was draped haphazardly around his shoulders.

“Cas,” Dean breathed, doing nothing to disguise his horror, “I told you to get some sleep!”  
“Sleep?” Cas’s answer was a harsh, scraping laugh. “N. The, ah... the pills? Hard to sleep when there are bugs crawling under your skin.”

Guilt slashed through Dean’s guts. It had been three months since Dean had given Cas those damned pills. He hadn’t known what else to do. He’d had to stop it somehow, back then. Stop the.. the look.

He’d had to find a way for Cas to stop looking at him as if his wings had been gashed out of his flesh with pitchforks. Cas used to screan at night, the pills were supposed to stop the screaming.

Now that he knew, Dean would give anything to take it back. The screams were nothing compared to the silence.

Cas let go of the door, turning his back on Dean and wandering into the cabin, giving him space. Dean sighed and lumbered in, shutting the door. He watched as Cas fell into a chair, favoring his right foot. Taking his coat off, Dean watched him, glowered at him, watched him close his eyes and let down an arm to touch the injured limb, and shut his eyes with pain. Dean wished he would say something.

When the camp was first established, there were enough run- down cabins and shelters for about three people to share one each. The small community divided themselves up into groups as they saw fit. Dean, acting leader of the group, had at first been offered his own cabin. But- of course, he declined. Responsibly. It looked humble and perhaps gracious to the outsider, but truth be told, he’d never lived on his own. Truthfully, it scared him. Plus- it’d been fine. Back then, it was easy. One cabin, and he and Cas and Sam- 

No. Don’t think about Sam. Don’t he ever fucking think of Sam.

Now it was just him and Cas. No one in the camp had commented to him about this arrangement. The apocalypse had conditioned them well- they adjusted, and moved on.

Dean thought about this, as he stood darkly in the half- light. Some had other methods of getting over things than others, he turned over in his mind. He glared at Cas, clenching and unclenching his hands. Just little white pills. Small, small, medicine, tic- tac looking motherfuckers. Small and deadly and just capable enough to crush an angel of the Lord. It made Dean slump down, any energy he had draining out onto the floor. It made his heart ache.

And it was Dean’s fault, of course. It always was. Hand Cas the white pill, tell him it would help. Hand him his undoing in a little, orange plastic tube. Easy to open, directions on the cap. Two a night- three on the bad ones. Hasta la vista to nightmares, bye- bye screaming. Hello silence. Shaking hands. Laughter that never reaches the eyes. Blank stares.

Whenever Cas meets Dean’s eye, all Dean could imagine seeing in them is betrayal.

“You were just trying to help.”

Whispered words, rasped out on a night two weeks ago when the bridge between the two was thin. The nightmares had been bad that time. Dean had tried to hold them in his hands, banish them.

Cas had taken four pills, and cried.

Dean had cried, too.

Now, looking at him, sitting in a corner with his eyes closed, Dean’s mind cleared slightly with the realization that he was so afraid. If he didn’t fix this man, he would become a shell of who he was, the annoying, awkward, terrifying as hell and somehow endearing best friend that had become so fatally tangled in the Winchester life. He was becoming hollower day by day. But what scared him more was the fact that Dean’s clumsy attempts at piecing Cas together was only breaking him more.

And Dean wasn’t even whole himself, these days.

He stumbled across the floor, guilt and drunkeness dragging him down, and fell into his excuse for a bed feeling as if weights sat on his chest and were pushing him back to the hell he’d crawled out of. 

There wouldn’t be any angel to lift him out this time.

**Author's Note:**

> I have so many End!verse blurbs floating around, I might post more if I get around to it.


End file.
